General Thoughts

Yes that's right FREE Websites for BMX Tracks and Teams! Even if your BMX track has a website already, my friend and colleague Teresa Linn and I are giving away free custom websites for any BMX Track and BMX Team. If you're in Florida, California, New Mexico, New York, or East Bumpkin we don't care; we want your track to start making some green to support your riders.   Here's what you're gonna get: Free hosting (no traffic limits or space restrictions) Custom wordpress theme and a logo if your track needs one Event calendar on the site (No more using a third party solution or redirecting to a different site, visitors stay on the site to see the events, and its MOBILE FRIENDLY!!!!) Photo & Video Galleries (Unlimited picture posting on the site.  Not via flickr, smugmug or other third party site.  Unless you really want it to.) Videos are uploaded and posted directly in the site and posts. Youtube video pulls and a whole page of Youtube videos pulled by our tubepress plugin.  If you have a channel we can pull that directly in the site or pull videos with specific key words in the titles. Emails for board members.  No more personal emails if you don't want to mix and mingle BMX and Grandma Joyce's Christmas Cruise photos.  Oh, and we can give you webmail for those as well. ADVERTISING SALES for your track!  Can you hear that everyone?   You can make banner

How bout those QR Codes?  I know you've seen them on the backs of business cards, on your Heinz Ketchup bottle, in newspaper advertisements, and even on the side of the service truck sitting next to you in traffic.  Are you really going to whip out your smart phone and scan that code?  Probably the first time, maybe the second time, definitely not the third time if what pops up on the other side isn't compelling or delivering the right content to you.  Did you get an exciting offer, or just a landing page that requires you to fill out a form.  As stated by this article by Mike at Social Media Handlers echos my sentiments.   By scanning the above image with your smart phone the QR code will take you to a website run by the Red Cross to support Japan after their earthquakes. Scanning that code will save you from manually typing 58 characters in to your phone’s browser which we know less than 1% of the people would even try. QR Codes have kind of, almost, in a way, taken over the in America, but not really. Confused? Read five different blogs and you will hear many different opinions on what the future of the QR code is. For the uninitiated, the above middle square is a Quick Response code. QR codes have been popular in Japan and South Korea for awhile, and seemingly like always,

February is the month of love people! So to celebrate all our Vlogos are only $59.00 What you get for 59 bucks is the best logo you will ever have made for you! You are entitled to 1 revision with 2 different versions of your logo.  You pick the best on and we revise it one time to make it perfect. I used to be 1/2 of 99dollarlogos.com and our success rate with logos is second to none.  Give it a try! You have nothing to lose and a great Vlogo to Love!  

Oh happy day... Oh happy day... as the famed Christian song goes; but wait, it's not a happy day! Oh my gosh!!!!  Someone posted bad things about you on your facebook page.  For a private person or J. Doe this is not the end of the world, but for a professional person or a business this can have dramatic consequences.  This damages reputation, credibility and causes loss of business which means less money in your pocket. But Chris... How do I fix this? Well like any thing if it's caught early we can mitigate the damage and do what we call reputation protection.   We have an expert that is awesome at protecting your reputation in social media. Coach Denise as we call her round here, is our social media engineer.  She has worked for companies like Procter & Gamble, IBM and smaller groups, companies, and individuals like yourself.   Her ability to do "Damage Control" is unparalleled.  Combine that with the tactical advantage of being a social media expert and really getting how the negative posts are displayed just like positive posts helps you mitigate the negative.  We can also do fact finding and counter the negative comments by addressing the individual directly on the wall.  If the truth is that a person or competitor is posting negative stuff because they just don't like you, that will all come out and be dealt with. There is a caveat to this.  If what they say about you is true, for instance you did bad

1. Care will prevent 9 out of 10 forest fires [U.S. Forest Service, 1944] In 1944, there were not enough able-bodied men available to eliminate forest fires. They were fighting in the war. The Ad council decided to launch a campaign to make people more aware of forest fire prevention. The bear is known by at least 70% of all American citizens. During the course of the ‘only you’ campaign, Smokey Bear has been seen with celebrities, organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and has been featured in cartoons, live action shows, and print ads.               2. The Absolut Bottle [Absolut Vodka, 1981] The first of the successful print ads, Absolut Perfection, came to Geoff Hayes in the bathtub. Over 1500 advertisements have been created for the company, using over 300 artists from all fields. The company’s popularity has soared since the first advertisement, it is now the third best-selling liquor in the world behind Bacardi and Smirnoff.                 3. We Try Harder [Avis, 1963] This idea was not a gimmick, it was the company’s business philosophy. In 1962, Hertz was undeniably at the top position in the car rental market. This print ad campaign was a simple response to the question on the minds of consumers everywhere: ‘Why should anybody ever rent a car from you?’ 4. Think Small [Volkswagen, 1959] This advertising campaign has been credited with changing the way that individuals thought about advertising. At the time, Volkswagen was not the prettiest

I love my new business cards. They arrived 3 days after I queued them for print at our plant. They are on a nice 16pt stock, full color on both sides, and have a matte (uncoated finish). Now Ive had some flashy cards in the past, gold foil, silk lamination, creative die cuts, you name it. But I'm really digging the simple yet bold look of these cards. By the way - if you want a set they are only 38.00 the week of Jan 30! Send me an email and Ill hook you up with a set of 1000 full color, double sided business card goodness!

Today things get back to some semblance of normalcy after almost two weeks of chaos! Are you ready for a doozie of a story?   Two Sundays ago, well let me back up to the Wednesday before to start.   My wife's mom and step-dad own a pizza restaurant called Luigi's.  There are several brothers that also own or have owned restaurants as well and after Bruno closed his resturant he went to work with Carlo at Luigi's.  Bruno passed away suddenly on that Wednesday because of a massive heart attack.  The weekend comes and the Florida SSA BMX Qualifier #3 & #4 begins.  Now if you follow my facebook postings, you know that my kids race bikes and we are always going to races. Sunday comes and we knew that Bruno's funeral services were going to be Sunday, so Heather my wife was going to start out at the BMX track (Naples BMX) and then head over to Fuller Funeral Home for the service.  I could have gone too but originally the service was to be the following Monday after Bruno's death on Wednesday.  Because all the family own restaurants, the service was moved to Sunday.  That morning my wife's mother Kelly was picking up an urn and tripped on a patch of uneven ground, falls on the urn and ruptures her spleen.  After spending 4 days in the hospital Mom was

Stop SOPA Blackout A Historic Victory After over 100,000 websites blacked out on Wednesday the US senate and congress have indefinitely shelved their assaults on a free web in the form of the SOPA and PIPA bills. This is a historic victory for the citizens of the internet. Through coordinated action they have defeated one of the most powerful corporate lobbys in the world and have proved the worth of the internet as a tool for activism. The bills are designed to stop online copyright infringement, by giving the US based copyright owners powers against any websites that that they deem to be aiding and abetting piracy. US law cannot reach as far as shutting down a foreign owned and operated website, so the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) instead take measures against US based institutions supporting the site. This means that “bad” websites can be taken off search engine results, have advertisers blocked from the site to stop any revenue and prevent any other payments and donations being handled by companies like Paypal or Visa. This may sound reasonable, but it encourages copyright owners to simply shut down anything they disagree with, then work out if they have a legitimate claim. As we’ve already seen when given new powers the music and film industries rarely use it wisely, SOPA and PIPA would allow copyright owners to to nuke first and ask questions later. The bills would mean that websites would be presumed guilty by a non-judicial

Recently I updated my browser from Internet Explorer 9.0 to 9.0.4 because it was part of the latest round of security updates that Big Momma Microsoft said I needed to install.  So every thing is all good, I'm humming along singing my favorite song when I get an email from one of the other designers in the group.  "Hey Chris, you're website is broke in Internet Explorer. You might want to check it out." Mark.   Since I do the majority of my surfing and development in Firefox because of Firebug... I never even noticed or thought for that matter to check the site after I updated IE to the next release.  Normally, we build a site and construct the css with the aid of Firefox and Firebug.  Then go and make small tweaks to correct defects in display for the 4 other major browsers, Safari, Chrome, IE Current, and IE 6.0.   So now an additiona check on the list has been added- "Check all cufon enabled sites for proper display after browser upgrade.

Ack! My laptop died! So my week started out great!  Good round of meetings set up, Brayden and I are started preparing him for his big SSA BMX State Qualifiers this weekend, and generally things were off to a great start.  Then.... my trusty AMD Powered Gateway laptop won't start up.  OH NOOO!  Now before you shake your finger and say I told you so, I do back up and store things on external devices so I didn't loose anything.  Well, I did loose a trusty workhorse that lasted for five years.   It survived a fall, complete chassis replacement, and numerous bumps, knocks, and slides off the front seat of my truck.  So with a saddness I will pull the hard drive and fire up my thecus external drive case so the soul of this little fellow can live on for a little while longer.  I am now typing this note on my new 17" HP quad core which so far is handling nicely.  We shall see if it lasts as long as the gateway! Wondering what I use to back up my stuff? Here is the list of products and devices I use: 1 Seagate Freeagent GoFlex 650 gigabyte portable drive 2 6 Gig Dropbox account for working projects 3 Drobo NAS raid system for complete backup of email, and other files 4 Commonsense  - Don't do things that are